


The Silent House

by Kaylin and Kira (Saphie)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-17
Updated: 2012-11-26
Packaged: 2017-11-18 13:50:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/561750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saphie/pseuds/Kaylin%20and%20Kira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson never could have predicted that accepting a co-worker’s invitation to dinner would lead to a clandestine mission to save the entire world. But when your dinner hosts are the Ponds, their son-in-law is an alien madman with a box, and your best friend is Sherlock Holmes (who, as it turns out, is alive and hot on the trail of an alien conspiracy) these things just sort of happen. There is a prophecy that silence must fall when the question is asked, but that's not going to happen when Sherlock Holmes is on the case--mostly because he never shuts up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note: This hasn't been Britpicked yet. We're currently look for one or two betas, preferably people that can britpick. If interested, hit us up in PM. If you notice any problems, please let us know in the reviews and we'll fix them.

**Prologue**

* * *

**  
**

It never really got dark in London. The sky went black of course, and there were probably stars up there past the light pollution, but the city itself stayed lit up. There were street lamps and lights from windows and cars. Even late at night, someone was about somewhere and they needed light to see by.

Someone was certainly about on this particular night, and he was carrying his own light. He was the sort to always carry a torch with him -- he hadn't always been, but he was now. You never knew when you'd need a proper torch. You never knew when you'd need a lot of things, in fact, so he sometimes carried around odds and ends that might be useful, like pocket knives and matches, and he always, always kept a charged mobile. Of course, the one person he wanted to call most if he was in trouble had been a bit of a long-distance call and wasn't even around anymore, but he supposed it never hurt to be prepared. He had a penchant for poking his nose into things when they seemed strange or unusual, and that was why he was where he was tonight.  
  
It had all started with a bit of Christmas shopping. His great-grandson had wanted one of those newfangled toys that had people fighting other people in the stores for, and while his grand-daughter had given up on the prospect of getting one, he wanted to at least give it a fair go. It wasn’t exactly above-board, but he’d heard from a man about a place where someone was selling some that may or may not have fallen off the back of a truck. In the end, he was a great deal poorer but in possession of one Squishy Tom the Squelchy Squid toy, or at least a knock-off that seemed the real thing, and he couldn’t wait to surprise his grand-daughter with it, and see the look on his great-grandson’s face on Christmas morning.  
  
It was when he was walking back in the direction of the bus stop when he saw the strange lights. London was generally well-lit, of course, but most London lights generally didn’t come in flashes and make noises like something out of an old science fiction film with inexpensive effects. Along with the patter of running feet, another sound echoed between the buildings to the old man’s ears, the throaty laughter of a woman.  
  
The man edged behind a dumpster and peeked around to get a better look when there was the sound of something breaking.  
  
“You idiots, have you any idea what you’ve done? It’s not going to hurt _me_ ,” the same woman who’d been laughing cried out, her voice angry now. For a moment, the man thought he saw something, a woman in a strange skintight white suit and an odd helmet, left open, and other shapes nearby, tall shapes with impossibly long limbs, but then there was a horrible flash of light that practically burned itself into the man’s retinas, and everything he saw was instantly forgotten. His skin prickled as if a million needles have been run through it, and he fell back against the wall behind the dumpster, breathing hard.  
  
“Oh, Lord Almighty. Oh no. Oh no.”  
  
Something was happening to him. He felt his skin crawling like it was trying to crawl right off his body, and breathing was getting difficult. He felt like he was starting to burn up inside, like there were coal embers at the center of him that something was fanning into flame. The torch dropped from his hand as he slumped against the wall, casting flickering shadows on the alley wall as it rolled, and the toy dropped to the asphalt at his feet.    
  
He couldn’t see what was happening anymore in the lot beyond, but he heard the woman yelling, and the sound of blasting weapons and running feet as the fight moved away.  
  
Why had he poked his nose in? he wondered to himself as he slid down the wall to the ground. He was too old to be doing things like this, and not nearly clever enough to be doing this on his own. He knew he should have just walked away.  
  
But the old man had heard _he_ was gone, gone for real, and his heart had broken over it. They all had heard, every one one of them had been left a message somehow and found out about it, either because he’d gone around and left them that message somehow through time travel during his last days or because one of the Ponds had told them at his request. And if he was gone and if something went wrong, who was left now, to try to do something about it, except those as could try to do the best they could?      
  
“Donna, I’m sorry, love.” It wasn’t right. She’d forgotten everything, had forgotten all that she was, and the Doctor was gone, and now she was going to lose him, too, all because he’d poked his nose where he shouldn’t have. He was an old fool.  
  
Wilfred Mott’s consciousness faded just like his eyesight had done, and he lay there, barely breathing, in the alley. Not long after, a drifter found him--and promptly stole his wallet, mobile, and even the doll he’d dropped, leaving him there to die.  
  
Not much longer after there, other people found him.  
  
“Give me your terrible little phone, I’m calling it in.” The speaker sounded feminine and Scottish, and there was a scuffling sound as she seized the phone in question rather than waiting for it. Several of the others moved to the old man’s side.  
  
“Has he got his wallet still?” a male voice asked, sounding slightly ruffled under clipped tones and public-school enunciation. “Anything that can be used to identify him?”  
  
“Looks like it’s already gone,” another male voice answered as its owner prodded through the unconscious man’s pockets. “Must’ve been stolen by someone passing by.”  
  
“Then we don’t need to do anything other than let events run their course.” The owner of the first male voice stood upright and moved away, allowing another figure to take his place. That figure waved a strange device over Wilf until it beeped at him.  
  
“He’s stable, for now,” the figure with the device said. “Everything should work out as it should.”  
  
“I feel terrible about this,” another male voice added fretfully. “Leaving him lying here like this.”  
  
“Don’t touch anything,” commanded the public school voice. “You’ll leave fingerprints. Hair. Skin.”

The owner of the fretful voice stiffened, but whatever he was about to say was cut off by the one with the beeping device.  
  
“I don’t like the idea of it, either, but he’s stable. We know he’ll be fine. This is the last thing we’ve got to do and then everything will work out the way it’s supposed to,” said the figure with the device, gently. "...Hopefully. No, wait, it definitely will. Yes. Let's just go with 'definitely' for now instead of 'hopefully.' Much better word, if you really think about it."   
  
The fretful voice made a distressed noise in response, but didn’t say anything else.  
  
“Hello, I’d like to report, um, a man?” The first voice was speaking into the phone now. “He’s unconscious in an alley. He seems very, very hurt and you should send an ambulance as soon as you can.” She followed up with the cross-streets, then hung up before the person on the other end of the line could ask any more questions.  
  
“Hang on, let me just leave this.”  
  
“Wait, you aren’t really just leaving it, are you? I thought you’d dropped it.”  
  
“I’ve got to leave it, haven’t I? It’s one of those whatsits. Where it’s got to be done because it’s been done. Even if it wasn’t, I’d do it anyway because of how much it annoyed you; it was entertaining.”  
  
There was a huffy noise in response.  
  
They left before the ambulance arrived to take the old man to the hospital, but the ambulance did come, and if things went right, the man would make it safely to the hospital, and, in a few days, he’d wake up, and there would be family and the story of an adventure waiting for him.

If things went right, of course.   
  
It never really got dark in London but sometimes, someone needed to work very hard to turn on the lights.


	2. The Man Who Waited

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just another note, the Doctor Who aspect of the timeline is ALSO pre-Power of Three, besides being pre-Angels of Manhattan and goes AU a little bit. This isn't the world of Sherlock and Doctor Who exactly as they are, more like a very similar alternate universe to both where they were realistically merged. 
> 
> We also still have no Britpicker so if you notice any mistakes in wording or references (we're not focused too much on spelling), please let us know. If anyone would be interested in Britpicking, we'd really appreciate it. Pop us a PM if you are.
> 
> Anyway, we hope you enjoy!

* * *

_"Have you been updating your blog?”_  
  
 _“You read it. You’ve commented on it. You already know I haven’t.”_

-

The blaring of an alarm clock shattered the air, swiftly accompanied by the sound of a hand slapping the bedside table instead of the button that would silence the noise. Eventually, the groping hand found the alarm clock and hit the right button, then withdrew. For a very long time, there was no sound in the room other than the man’s quiet breathing, and no movement at all.  
  
It was like this every morning. He lay there in bed, trying to come up with enough reasons to actually will himself out of it for the day.

-

_“It could help you work out your feelings, if you did.”_  
  
 _“Nothing--nothing has changed. I told you last week that nothing has changed. And the week before that. You keep telling me that, like it’s ever going to.”_  
  
 _“You’re still seeing me, John. You’re still grieving. It has to change sometime.”_  
  
 _“I just--I need more time to work through it. That’s all.”_  
  
 _“More time?”_  
  
 _“Yes. Yes, that’s--yes.”_

_-_

After about ten minutes of laying there in silence, Dr. John Watson finally sat up in bed, blinking his eyes open and shut. He had work. There was work, and he needed to work to pay the rent, and he owed Harry a call this week. Every two weeks on Friday nights. She worried. That’s why he’d promised to call her, so she wouldn’t worry.  
  
He had to get up for the day and act like normal and go to work, and then call Harry when he got home, and find all the right things to say, make up all the little white lies about things he was doing so that she wouldn’t worry.    
  
John usually set his alarm earlier than he needed to be up. He needed to, because most mornings, like this morning, he spent a good deal of time staring at the wall and ceiling for a bit before he managed to get himself out of bed.

-

_“You’ve had three years, John. Don’t you think it’s time to move on?”_

  
_Silence. There was only silence in response._

-

  
There were cracks in the wall of his apartment that branched out like a spider’s web, and the paint was chipped. Off-white, scuff marks around the trimming.  
  
 _He_ would’ve known what the shoe color, size, what position the old tenant’s foot had been in to make those marks, and who knew what else, just by looking at them.     
  
John didn’t know what they meant, but he noticed things like that more and more as time went on. Scuff marks, drips of paint, cracks in walls, crumbs on sleeves, all the little things. He noticed them, even if he couldn’t make sense of them. The act of just noticing them felt right.     
  
Observation. John observed the world as he wandered through it, as time ticked on by without anything changing. Observing the world was all he had because he couldn’t really live in it anymore. Not really.  
  
He got up and trundled around his apartment quietly, yanking a pair of trousers out of the laundry basket, smelling them, wrinkling his nose, and then tossing them aside to grab another pair.  
  
Breakfast was an apple and water--the milk had gone bad and the bread was too mouldy for toast.  
  
He almost forgot his stethoscope. Again. He remembered it this time, though, _before_ he went down the stairs, instead of after, which was fortunate because he always had trouble navigating the stairs, and it was always an awful start to the day when he forget something and had to make his way back up again to his flat.  
  
He didn’t forget his cane.  
  
Since the day John Watson woke up and found out that his limp had come back, he never forgot his cane.

_-_

  
_“I think you still haven’t confronted this the way you need to. You’re showing signs of being in a very deep depression and--”_  
  
 _“I think my time’s up.”_  
  
 _“You have five more minutes.”_  
  
 _“It’s up.”  He gave Dr. Thompson a wan smile as he stood up with great effort and started to limp towards the door. “Thank you. I’ll see you next week.”_

-

  
John didn’t talk to anyone at work. Not more than he needed to, at any rate. Patients were generally pleased with him because his quiet manner usually came off more gentle than cold, but most of his coworkers had given up on trying to make conversation with him after multiple attempts at it trailed off into awkward silences.  
  
And woe unto anyone that brought up the-subject-that-was-to-be-avoided. Around when he’d first taken the job, a nurse named Linda Culvers, who had a bit of a yen for gossip, had flirted with him a bit and had a nice little chat with him--and then asked the wrong question. People had heard the yelling all the way out in one of the waiting rooms, Culvers had gone off in tears, and Dr. Watson had gotten a reprimand for it.    
  
They’d all given him a wide berth after that.  
  
“Good morning, Dr. Watson!”  
  
With one exception. John nodded to the resident who’d greeted him. “‘Morning, Dr. Pond.”  
  
Pond was a polite fellow hailing originally from Leadworth, working through his residency and madly in love with his wife, who was apparently a model (consensus around the hospital was that Pond was too lucky by half). John had run into her more than few times, usually when she’d swung by the hospital to meet her husband for lunch and tease him. He’d been left with a general impression of red hair, legs, and Scottishness. Beautiful, and equally mad for her husband.  
  
That last fact was one that he’d found out rather immediately because the first time he’d met her he’d started flirting with her before noticing the wedding ring. Fortunately, Rory was rather forgiving and Amy had been contented with being arch at him for the rest of the afternoon.  
  
It was all for the best, anyway. All of John’s recent relationships had been disastrous, to the point that he now only sought out the odd one-night stand here and there or friends-with-benefits situation until the woman he was involved with got tired of his emotional distance or until they started to pry into the subject he never wanted to talk about because they always had to ask the wrong question.  
  
That’s what _made_ it the wrong question, because whether it was well-meaning, hostile, or disbelieving, it was the one people always asked.

-

_“Do you really believe he wasn’t a fake?” Nurse Culvers asked him, and for a moment, all he could do was stand there, staring at her with his jaw set, breathing deeply through his nose. An expression of horrified understanding passed over her face as she realized what she’d just done by asking him that._

-

“Looks like a relatively quiet night last night,” Pond said, poking through a stack of charts. “Huh, we’ve got a Joe Bloggs who hasn’t woken up yet. Want to come take a look? It might be interesting.”

  
John sighed. “No thanks. I’m going to get started on my rounds.” He hoped that would be the end of it, but Pond caught up to him again a few moments later.  
  
“My wife is experimenting with cooking before the family comes by for the holidays,” he said without any further preamble. “Want to swing by and help me eat it? I’ve been told that my opinion doesn’t count for much, since I’ve been eating anything she’s told me to since we were five, so we need a second opinion.”  
  
Pond was always doing things like this. John had told him flat out that he didn’t need his pity, but Pond had only looked confused and sworn up and down that pity didn’t come into it.  
  
“Not tonight,” he said. “I’ve got plans.” White lie. He had a plan, to call Harry, but Pond didn’t need to know the details.  
  
“Oh.” Pond opened his mouth to say more, but John ducked into a patient’s room before he could get it out. Hopefully by the time he came out, Pond would have gone on his own rounds. The man was an absolute menace to the comfortable monotony of John’s life.

* * *

  
“Doctor Watson!”  
  
John didn’t need to turn around to know who was calling after him. If the waft of perfume on the breeze hadn’t told him, the accent certainly left him without a doubt.  
  
“Haven’t seen your husband since this morning, Mrs. Pond,” he said, not looking up from his paperwork. Unfortunately, the click of heels continued to come nearer instead of going off to investigate some other location.  
  
“I have,” Mrs. Pond replied. “He said you have plans tonight. And you do! But they’re at our flat. I need food testers, Dr. Watson.” She pushed down the clipboard that he’d been trying to hide behind and batted her eyelashes at him. “Please?”  
  
Now they were in cahoots against him. Glorious. John considered updating his mental file on Dr. Pond, as he was clearly a bad man and aware of John’s completely inability to say ‘no’ to beautiful women. Even when they were spoken for.  
  
Or maybe Mrs. Pond really had ordered him to find her food testers. Hard to tell, she seemed rather the ordering type.  
  
“...All right,” he said finally. “I suppose I could come by later this evening.”  
  
“Excellent!” Mrs. Pond favored him with a winning smile. “I’ll expect you around half-past six. Any allergies I should be aware of or will you be completely at my mercy?”  
  
“Err, no allergies,” John answered, vaguely alarmed.  
  
“Wonderful! I’m trying Anglo-Indian this year. Bring your tastebuds!”  
  
Mrs. Pond vanished before John could say anything else, presumably to inform her husband that she’d succeeded in her mission.

* * *

  
John had just enough time after work to stop by his flat and change into something more suited for socializing than his work clothes. Jeans and a jumper, with a coat on top for good measure. He was just reaching for the door when his phone rang, making him start in surprise.  
  
He didn’t get a lot of calls anymore, as he’d gone unlisted to get the papers off his back. Usually nowadays it was work. Sometimes it was Harry, though he usually called her. Sometimes Greg called him for extra help on a case -- he’d been forced to retire from the force after everyone else decided that Sherlock had been a fraud, but he’d gone into private investigations. He was decent enough at it, cheating spouses and background checks and all that, though the odd hours had apparently been the final death-blow to his troubled marriage. After John’s anger had passed and they’d had a rather candid talk that cleared the air, they went out drinking together on occasion. Mrs. Hudson rang as well, to see how he was getting on.  
  
And, every so often, he’d get one of _those_ calls.  
  
He thought they were crank calls at first, and had been infuriated by them, but they never showed up on his phone records when he requested them from the phone company--and he had requested them after the first time and a few times after, until it was quite clear there were no records of anyone calling. When the person called, his caller ID always said “Unknown.” Like it did now. And then didn’t have that “Unknown” listing when he looked back later, like no one had called at all.  
  
And he knew. He always knew things no one else would know but him.  
  
John hesitated, doing the mental math. It was hard to say how long the call would last, if he took it. He didn’t want to be out-right rude to the Ponds, but...  
  
He answered his phone. He could make up an excuse when he got there.  
  
“I'm losing time," said the voice on the other end quietly.  
  
"Don't you mean you're running out of time?" John asked, gingerly lowering himself to sit in his favorite armchair--it was the one he’d had over in their flat on Baker Street. He’d had to move out of the place, of course, and he hadn’t brought much over; too much of it reminded him of Sherlock. It was a nice chair, though, and quite comfortable, and sometimes--especially during times like this--sitting it in it let him almost imagine his best friend sitting across from him in his own armchair like he’d often done when he was alive.  
  
"Don't be stupid, if I meant I was running out of time, I'd have said that. I'm losing it, John."  
  
John took a deep breath in through his nose and out through his mouth. “I think we both know that I’m the one losing it.”  
  
“Well yes, you are having this conversation with me. Have you told your psychiatrist about our little chats yet?”  
  
“No.” John shook his head, and swallowed down the thick lump in the back of his throat. “No, I haven’t.”  
  
“But you’re still seeing her.”  
  
“Well, let’s see, post-traumatic stress, my psychosomatic limp’s returned, and imaginary talks with my dead best friend on the telephone,” John said, voice edged with sarcasm. “Those are probably things one should see a psychiatrist for, don’t you think?”      
  
“It’s always the detail that’s left out that’s most telling, John. It’s been nearly two years since I started calling. You still haven’t told her about our calls because you’re afraid if you talk to her about them that they’ll stop, and you don’t want them to.”  
  
There was silence for a while.  
  
“Does it help, John? Or make it worse? Does it help at all?”  
  
The silence dragged out longer, as John rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers, shook his head, pressed his lips together, and then said, “God help me, but it does.”  
  
Sometimes Sherlock asked questions--as if he was trying to jog something in his own mind, and use John as the sounding board he’d used him for in life. Recently, they’d become strange questions, though, stranger than any he’d ever asked him before. (“What does an art theft have to do with the end of the world, John?” “I don’t know, Sherlock, but unless the end of the world is _actually happening_ , stop calling me at three o’clock in the bloody morning. You know what, sod that, even if it _is_ happening, let me just sleep through it.” “Munch’s ‘The Scream,’ John. I know it’s the key.” “I have a shift in the morning, you inconsiderate arsehole, good night.”)  
  
Sometimes they bickered a bit, or teased each other good-naturedly. They even chatted about John’s day sometimes, about work, about the few women he dated, about things Sherlock wouldn’t have talked to him about in life, but was far more patient with in death. It was as if the imaginary Sherlock was trying to pay John back for dying by being more involved in the bits of his daily life he would have once have considered tedious. One the one hand, John wasn’t sure if it was something Sherlock would have done in life and it made him wonder if his delusions were a little rosier than the reality would’ve been, but on the other, the bastard really did owe him for killing himself in the first place.  
  
In any case, where they should have made John feel like he had gone completely ‘round the bend, the talks just made John feel like he was on a more even keel instead. After the calls, he felt like going out more, living his life more, heading down to the pub, actually being social, at least for a bit. He knew that was probably backwards, he knew the calls were just the byproduct of grief and his own fevered imagination, but there it was.  
  
“I’m glad then,” Sherlock said quietly, almost timidly. “I’ll keep calling.”  
  
“You had better. It’s bad enough I can open my fridge and _not_ find dismembered limbs dripping on the butter; I’m not sure I could go without calling you an idiot for very long. You are, by the way, an idiot, in case it wasn’t clear.”  
  
He could practically hear the smile in Sherlock’s voice, that small quirk that had always shown up at the corner of his mouth when he was genuinely amused instead of faking it. “Has that filled your weekly quota?”  
  
“No. You’re an idiot.”  
  
Sherlock actually laughed now, low and quiet. “Now?”  
  
“Yeah, that’ll do.” John was smiling now, despite himself. Then his lips pressed together again. “I should probably go. I don’t really have time for a talk tonight. Been invited to dinner by one of the residents from work--that bloke from Leadworth that’s been trying to get me out of my shell. He played dirty. When I brushed him off, he got his wife to ask me--you know, the model.”    
  
“Ah, keying into your greatest weakness. Clearly he’s a dastardly mastermind. Go have dinner; I’ll ring you again next week sometime.”  
  
John nodded to himself, trying to put off hanging up, but knowing he had to. The longer it went on, the more difficult it’d be coming up for an excuse for his lateness, and he certainly couldn’t tell the Ponds the truth. Not unless he wanted to get sectioned.    
  
“Sherlock?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
This was what he always ended with, like clockwork, something he wasn’t sure he would have said if it was really his friend because it was far too sentimental, but said anyway, because it was all imaginary: “I do miss you, you know.”     
  
It was always, always, always in a choked voice.  
  
It was always the same answer back, always in the same quiet, deeply pained tone: “I know, John.”  
  
Then, like he always did, Sherlock hung up.  
  
John checked the caller ID like he always did, saw that it was blank like it always was, and slumped back in his chair, all his energy escaping in a sigh. It took nearly ten minutes before he could gather the willpower to rise to his feet and make for the door again, but when he did, his step was a little lighter, and his leg hurt a little less. He was still adrift in the haze when he’d made it out to the walk, and very suddenly collided with a woman. Her foot managed to knock his cane out from under him just as he was leaning on it, but she caught him before the two of them collapsed in a heap on the ground.  
  
“Oh dear,” she said, sounding more amused than anything else. “I am forever running into doctors going the opposite way. Are you alright?”  
  
“Fine,” John answered, regaining his footing as she stabilized him with a hand on his chest. She was rather attractive -- taller than he was, though some of that could be due to her heels (one of which, oddly, had a splotch of blue paint on it), with smiling eyes and riotously curly hair. A part of his brain underscored the first detail several times over and sent a quick message to other appropriate parts, ignoring a quiet, niggling feeling. “Fine, thanks. Just fine.”  
  
“Good, good, I’m glad.” The woman smiled widely at him and patted his chest again. “Hate to hit-and-run, but I must be off. Keep a hold on that jacket, it’s quite nippy out and you’ll certainly want it later.” She began to push past him, but the niggling thought finally bubbled to the surface and John quickly caught her arm.  
  
“Sorry,” he said, narrowing his eyes suspiciously, “but how did you know that I was a doctor?”  
  
The woman raised her eyebrows, but didn’t stop smiling. “How did I know?” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “Spoilers!”  
  
Before he could ask what on Earth she meant by that, she’d whipped her arm out of his grip and disappeared around the corner. There shouldn’t have been time for her to get very far, but by the time John rounded it as well, she’d vanished.  
  
John spent a moment looking around with a quizzical expression on his face, leaning around an alley to peek down it (it was empty) before shaking his head and carrying on with his evening.  
  
Mysteries had lost their appeal somewhat without Sherlock to unravel them with, so as a general rule, John avoided poking his nose into them.  

* * *

  
John hesitated one last moment before the bright blue door of the Ponds’ flat before pressing their buzzer. No backing out once he’d done that -- of course, if he’d made it all the way to the stoop, it would probably take more energy than it was worth to sneak off. Dr. Pond answered the door just in time for John to hear a crash from the kitchen.  
  
“Amy’s an...enthusiastic chef,” Dr. Pond explained, looking a little sheepish. “Come in, come in! Let me take your coat. You didn’t have any trouble getting here, I hope?”  
  
“A bit,” John lied, as he shrugged his coat off. “Sorry I’m late.”  
  
“No trouble, glad you made it here safe,” Dr. Pond said. “I should have given you better directions.”  
  
John’s reply was lost in another crash from the kitchen. “That’s it, you little bastard, I’m breaking out the fryer!” Dr. Pond looked vaguely alarmed and stepped toward the kitchen, glancing back at John over his shoulder. “I thought she was making soup. Hang on a tick.”  
  
John limped after him instead. “Is it possible to fry soup?”  
  
“Don’t let her hear you say that. She’s probably joking now, but if she hears that, she might take it as a challenge.”  
  
If Mrs. Pond was going to try it, John figured that it seemed like something that would be worth seeing.  
  
The kitchen was decently-sized, and clearly used for its intended purpose of preparing food, unlike John’s kitchen, which was primarily used for reheating takeout. There were bags from the store on the counter, and various elements of food preparation scattered from countertop to sink. And Mrs. Pond did seem intent on actually frying the soup, in spite of her husband’s attempts at protest and restraint.  
  
“No, Rory Pond, it’s being bloody stupid, and I won’t have bloody stupid best me in my kitchen!”  
  
“There is no soup in the world that can best you, trust me, but you can’t fry it.”  
  
“Oh can’t I?”  
  
Dr. Pond winced and shot John a slightly helpless look. John raised his eyebrows in response, uncertain as to what Dr. Pond wanted him to do. Mrs. Pond seemed to spot him at this point, and briefly stopped attempting to wriggle out of her husband’s arms.  
  
“Oh, you’re here. Rory, you didn’t tell me our guest was here.”  
  
“I can always leave and come back again, Mrs. Pond,” John offered dryly. Mrs. Pond scoffed.  
  
“You’re in my kitchen. It’s ‘Amy’ from now on,” she said, wriggling free. “And he’s Rory, obviously. Rory, get him a drink or something while I finish this up. Did you remember to get the fish fingers and custard?”  
  
“Yes dear, I got the fish fingers and custard,” Dr. Pond -- Rory -- said, heading for the cupboard and shooting John a relieved look. He caught John’s dubious look in response, and his mouthing of ‘fish fingers and custard?’ “Don’t worry, you won’t be expected to eat it. Er. Family tradition for Christmas Day, Amy just likes to be prepared.”  
  
John wasn’t really one to question family traditions. Before his parents had died, his family’d had quite a few. For instance, on Christmas Eve, their mum would always have him and Harry open a present of pyjamas for them to wear Christmas morning. Usually flannel.    
  
That fact, like many others, was something he planned to keep to himself. So far they seemed alright enough, so far they seemed sincere, but that had happened before. So he simply gave them both a small, strained smile, and took a seat in one of the chairs at the table, resting his cane against the table itself.  
  
That’s when the awkward silence took over. It always did at some point, usually because it was difficult to have a conversation with someone that shared hardly any personal details about themselves and wasn’t one for small talk. John looked around the kitchen, casting about for something--something that wasn’t too personal--to talk about. That’s when he noticed the fez, hanging on a pot hook. He shook his head quizzically.  
  
“A fez?” he asked. “Useful for cooking, that?”  
  
“It's a joke with a friend of ours,” Rory said with a light laugh. “He has a thing with wearing ridiculous accessories sometimes.”  
  
“That we have to confiscate for his own good,” Amy chimed in. She knew they really had to move them from somewhere other than the pot hooks, but ever since the Doctor had made one of his sneaky “Sssh, don’t tell anyone I’m alive” visits wearing it and they’d snatched it off his head and put it there, there it had stayed, where they could see it whenever they walked into the kitchen. “But you know how men can be with their silly hats."  
  
Neither Amy or Rory realized the implications of what Amy had said until John’s chair scraped against the floor as he got up.  
  
“Oh,” Amy said, turning around. “Oh no, I meant--that was a general. Thing. I didn’t mean--”  
  
“You people,” said John, shaking his head. “It was bad enough as it was--but you people. Every single one of you people... the reporters, and the crazed fans, and the people that just wanted the gossip, that wanted to know the _real_ story. You people have made it into something--into something--”  
  
John broke off and shook his head, breathing in and out through his nose, snatching up his cane.  
  
Rory looked horrified. “Dr. Watson--John--she didn’t mean--I know from the telly, about the hat thing, but she didn’t mean--”  
  
“And I suppose you’ve read the blog, too, am I right? Read all the papers, read the blog, and just--there I was, and if you got to know me, you could be those special people that know about that thing you saw on the telly, know the _real_ story.”  
  
The first year afterward, when he’d tried to date again, there’d been Shelly. Shelly who chatted him up in a pub, who he’d dated, who he thought he’d had something with, who’d made him think maybe things were starting to look up--who’d turned out to be a reporter, wanting to write an exclusive article, a revealing tell-all, on the one-year anniversary of his death.     
  
She hadn’t been the only person that tried to squirm their way in and get the gossip. Some had even accused him of contributing to Sherlock’s scam, said that his entire blog was obviously a work of fiction. People were nosy and vicious that way, and those “trust issues” that his psychiatrist was so fond of pointing out had gotten more severe than ever in the years since Sherlock’s death.  
  
“You...” John said, breathing in and out, trying to keep his voice from cracking. “You all make me sick. The whole lot of you.”    
  
He thought he was done with this. After the inquiry had cleared at least some of the allegations against Sherlock (leaving the rest a mystery to most of the world, though John continued to insist on the truth), what had been a thorn of grief stuck in his side all this time was starting to become old news to the rest of the world. It was why he’d even come out tonight, because it’d been a while and they’d seemed so sincere, but it was never going to end, was it? Even if the world had moved on, the part of the world directly around John Watson never world.    
    
“Are you done?” Amy asked, crossing her arms and staring at him with surprising defiance. “Good, because you got an awful lot of mileage out of a comment about stupid hats! Yes, I read your blog, and Rory did too, because we’d also just lost someone bloody brilliant out of our lives and it was nice to know that there was someone out there who understood what we were going through! So yes, we’re nice to you, but we don’t pity you, and we don’t mean any harm, and we’re not going to go run and blab to any bloody papers about the Life and Times of Doctor John Watson, so you can just sit your arse down and drink your tea and we can find a topic that isn’t going to set you off into a fit!”  
  
Rory had sunk down into his chair and buried his face in his hands. “You know, I’d hoped we wouldn’t make the screaming row a holiday tradition...”  
  
For a moment, John dithered there, unsure, and then after looking at the sincerity on Rory’s face, and the genuine anger on Amy’s, he had the good grace to be thoroughly embarrassed.  
  
“I just--I just completely misread that and overreacted, didn’t I,” he said, breathing in and out, trying to calm down.  
  
“A bit,” said Amy frostily.  
  
Fighting the urge to just run out--borne of making an utter fool of himself--he lowered himself back into his seat and picked up his cup of tea, left hand trembling slightly.  
  
“Look, John, it’s not our business. What really happened, all that business on the news. All I know is you’re a good doctor, and you obviously care about your patients, and you were really patient with Mrs. Wakefield and her hip when she was terrorizing everyone else on the floor last month, and you’re a laugh when you let yourself joke around. And you said you still believe in a friend. On your blog. When the whole world was set against you.” Rory quickly followed up, “From all that, I thought that you were a man probably worth getting to know. I just thought--Amy and I thought--it might be nice to invite you to dinner. Honest.”  
  
It was the earnestness that sold it. There was no possible way someone could fake being that earnest. He was reasonably certain that the only thing more earnest than that look was a damp puppy in a cardboard box.  
  
“Well,” said John quietly, and he took a sip of his tea. “I feel like a tit right about now.”  
  
“Yeah, well, you can make up for it by telling me if this is supposed to taste like it does,” Amy said, snagging the spoon out of the soup and thrusting it at John.  
  
“I...don’t even know what it is,” John said, taking the spoon from her anyway, in case she decided to hit him with it.  
  
“It’s supposed to be mulligatawny,” she said, still looking half-way to cross. John gingerly blew on the spoon to cool it off before taking a sip.  
  
“I’ve never had mulligatawny before,” he said. “I don’t know what it’s supposed to taste like.” But he was reasonably certain it wasn’t supposed to taste like that. Or have that weird, gritty texture. It probably would have been better if she fried it, it was hard to see how that could make it worse. “Good, though. Very, very good. That’s fantastic. Delicious.”  
  
Amy squinted at him. Rory hid his mouth behind his hand.  
  
“Wow, you really _are_ apologetic,” Amy said finally. “And a horrible liar.”  
  
John smacked his lips together, and tried to swallow the taste of it away. “It’s pretty terrible. Yes. Sorry. I’m--I’ve been invited to dinner, yelled at you, and now I’m insulting your food. Sorry about that. I think as far as being a house-guest goes I’ve set some kind of new record in awfulness. All that’s left now is some sort of comical accident that involves losing the urn with your beloved great-aunt’s ashes or something.”  
  
Rory snorted, and Amy’s coldness had finally given way to a warm smile, and light laughter.  
  
“You’re a perfectly good house-guest. I wanted honesty, Dr. Watson. I appreciate it. Stupid-face here will eat anything I tell him to. Has since we were five.”  
  
“Fortunately, she doesn’t abuse her power. Too much.” Rory gamely winced when Amy thwapped him with an oven mitt.  
  
“Cheek! You’re lucky I don’t save this for your lunch,” she said, moving the attempted mulligatawny off the stove top. “And a friend glued the urn in question down after the third time he nearly knocked it over; I think misplacing an entire bookshelf is a bit beyond even you.”  
  
“It’s John,” John said suddenly. At the raised eyebrows he got, he went on, “Instead of Dr. Watson, I mean. You can call me John.”     
  
It got better after that, better than it’d been in a very long time for John. Rory and Amy told him a bit how they’d met as children, about places they’d traveled to, like Nevada, which was apparently gorgeous when the sun set. John was fairly certain that there weren’t wolves the size of ponies in Norway, though, but they were probably just joking around with him. They talked a bit about politics and the news--not that John ever paid attention to it anymore, but he was able to hold his own in the conversation well enough. On his part, he told them a few sparse details about his family, and even a little bit about his time in Afghanistan--nothing deeply personal, nothing dark, but a little bit about the work he’d done.  
  
John and Rory also talked a bit about the hospital and some of the more amusing characters they’d run into lately, relating the funnier stories to Amy if she hadn’t heard them from Rory yet. Like the man who had showed up in the emergency room with a knee injury, and then showed up the next week with the same injury on the other leg, looking sheepish, because he'd injured himself again showing someone else what he'd done to injure himself the first time. That one had Amy nearly rolling on the floor by the time the two doctors were finished it.  
  
They sampled some of Amy’s other culinary experiments, John and Rory even helped her prep the food some, and they had a glass of wine after dinner from a vintage that had a label in a language John had never seen before. By the end of dinner, John felt more relaxed in his own skin than he had in ages, and also felt absolutely ridiculous for doubting that the Ponds had intentions other than extending a hand in friendship. Rory had been nothing but kind to him since they’d started working together, after all.  
  
It was at the tail end of a story about gross medical incompetence that they decided to move into the drawing room to converse more comfortably.  
  
“So then, then he asks ‘what does amox-sis-alan do?’ This man’s a nurse, gone through nursing school, and he doesn’t know amoxicillin is a basic antibiotic. Or even how to pronounce it. Horrifying. Absolutely horrifying, some of the people schools are turning out these days,” John said as Amy flicked on the light to the drawing room.  
  
“Being horrifying _is_ usually the only thing the grossly incompetent are competent at,” said a deep voice.  
  
It came from the man sitting very casually in one of the chairs in the center of the room, his fingers steepled in front of him. He had turned the chair to face the doorway, as if he’d been expecting them--largely because he had. A chance to talk to the three of them was why he’d broken into the Ponds’ flat, after all. His curly brown hair was scruffy and hanging lank in his face, which had a slight overgrowth of stubble, as if he’d been trying to keep clean-shaven but never quite had the time or resources available to make himself stay that way. His clothes were wrinkled and filthy, but it was clear that he’d made at least some efforts to keep them clean, as if was circumstance and not choice that had led to him not having a clean change of clothes. His coat was draped over the back of the chair.  
  
Most alarmingly, though, there were little hatch-marks scribbled over nearly every visible inch of his arms and hands, visible because of his rolled up sleeves, in permanent black marker, little lines meant to tally something off. There were even a few on his neck and face.  
  
The sight of the man alarmed all three of the people entering the room, causing them to cry out in surprise, but those marks--those incredibly familiar marks on his skin--had Rory and Amy’s eyes going even wider.  
  
It was the man’s pale face and bright blue-green eyes, alert and unmistakable, however, that had a gray mist swirling in front of John’s vision for a moment, and his bad leg collapsing out from under him, so that Amy had to lunge forward and grab him to keep him from hitting the floor too hard.  
  
For sitting there in front of them, distinctly alive, breathing--and sarcastic--was none other than Sherlock Holmes.


End file.
